10 P.M.—The larva shrinks. With its support, that is to say, its head anchored to the snowy cushion, it brings its hinder end a little nearer; it coils up, hunches its back and gradually turns itself into a ball. Though not yet perceptible, the ampulla is being prepared. The siccative has taken effect; the original gumminess has been transformed into a sort of skin, flexible enough at this moment to be distended by the pressure of the back. When its capacity is large enough, the grub will become unglued, throw off its envelope and find itself at liberty in a spacious enclosure. I should much like to see this peeling, but things happen so slowly as to drive one to despair. Let us go to bed. What I have seen is enough to enable me to guess the little that remains to be seen. Next day, when the pale dawn gives me sufficient light, I hasten to my two larvæ. The bladder is completed. It is a graceful ovoid of the finest gold-beater’s-skin, adhering at no point to the insect inside. It has taken some twenty hours to manufacture. It has still to be strengthened with a lining. The transparency of the wall enables us to follow the operation. We see the grub’s little black head rising and falling, swerving this way and that and from time to time gathering with its mandibles, at the door of the intestine, a particle of cement, which is instantly placed in position and meticulously smoothed. So the interior of the hut is plastered, point after point, by small touches. Lest I should not see clearly through the wall, I cut off the top of a bladder, partly uncovering the larva. The work is continued without much hesitation. The strange method is revealed as plainly as one could wish. The grub makes use of its behind as a store of consolidating cement; the end of the intestine serves as the equivalent of the hod from which the bricklayer takes his trowelful of mortar. This original mode of procedure is familiar to me. At one time, a big Weevil, the Spotted Larinus, inhabiting the blue-headed globe-thistle (Echinops Ritro), enabled me to witness a similar method. The Larinus also expels its own cement. With the tips of its mandibles it gathers it from the evacuating orifice, applying it with strict economy. Moreover it has other materials at its disposal, the hairs and remnants of the florets of its thistle. Its cement is used only to plaster and glaze the work. The Cionus’ larva, on the other hand, employs nothing but the oozings of its intestine; consequently the little hut resulting is of incomparable perfection.